Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that the President has (finally) released an original copy of the “long form” of his birth certificate.

Gawd this has gone on forever. Your Maximum Leader is willing to distribute “blame” for the whole “birther” controversy in the following shares: 55% to the Birthers themselves for being dense, suspicious and ultimately unserious; 40% to the President and his team for just now getting around to this “issue”; and 5% to Donald Trump for being a complete media manipulating bastard for talking up this point to bolster himself (which, frankly, is all Donald Trump ever does).

Your Maximum Leader (if you couldn’t tell already) is not a “birther.” Indeed, he’s been alternately mildly amused to mildly disgusted by this sideshow of an issue for years. But his mild bemusment came to a head at a dinner he attended last week. Your Maximum Leader is a member of a social club of good gentlemen in the community. We meet quarterly for dinner and drinks and have other neat social events throughout the year (culminating in a huge black-tie dinner and dance).

At dinner your Maximum Leader sat with some of his friends for dinner and eventually the conversation turned to politics. It was then that your Maximum Leader discovered that two of his friends were “birthers.” Your Maximum Leader sat by and listened for a while before he couldn’t stand to sit by and let this mindlessness continue. Your Maximum Leader stood up for the President being born in the United States. He eventually had to tell these gentlemen that they were being at the best unserious commentators on politics in general and at the worst they were being willing dupes and spreading lies that were easily disproved.

Let it suffice to say that the dinner conversation went downhill from there… In the end your Maximum Leader came off as the “liberal bleeding heart” at the table. The rationale for this label was found in the fact that in one dinner your Maximum Leader: stood up for the President being an American, maintained that the police should not be given the authority to shoot on sight drug dealers whom they suspect of also being illegal immigrants, argued that no elected official in Washington DC of any party is being serious about how to address the nation’s debt, and finally claiming that the Obama Administration’s stimulus bill was not unconstitutional.

Your Maximum Leader wonders if his standing in the club will ever be the same…

Anyhooo…

As much as your Maximum Leader thinks this latest press conference and release of the President’s birth certificate should end the whole “birther” escapade; he fears it will just give rise to more and more complicated conspiracy theories concerning the President’s place of birth…

I weep for the future.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure that you’ll care about this, but he gets a kick out of mentioning it.

Your Maximum Leader added five new random tag lines to the old database of random tag lines. (They are right over there! Just to the right of these words… At the very top of the right side nav bar… Yep… Over there…)

One of the added taglines was the phrase “Crazy sexy super time fun!” He saw that line on a t-shirt yesterday. As the person wearing the t-shirt was a college student your Maximum Leader wasn’t sure if it was some sort of meta-joke that he wasn’t in on. Alternately, it reminded him of t-shirts he’s seen produced in Asian countries. The shirts string together English words in all sorts of ungrammatical ways. Anyway… Your Maximum Leader thought that “Crazy sexy super time fun!” might become one of his unoffical mottos.

Another of your Maximum Leader’s unoffical mottos is: “fortuna amissa impotens mentula magna.” (Thanks Arethusa! You’re the greatest for helping render that!)

Your Maximum Leader needs to put both those mottos on t-shirts…

He also needs a young hottie to be his t-shirt babe… (NB to young hotties who might be reading this blog: if you are interested in becoming your Maximum Leader’s t-shirt babe send him an email. The job doesn’t pay much, but does get you a free t-shirt or two… And a thong… So you’ve got that going for you…)

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader notes that today, April 12, is the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War (or the War of the Insurrection as the official US Army history of the conflict calls it).

Your Maximum Leader doesn’t stop to think of the Civil War often. He finds himself contemplating many other historical conflicts. He doesn’t think too much of the Civil War because the outcome never seemed to be in doubt. Perhaps your Maximum Leader is very blase about the conflict; but the only interesting point (militarially speaking - to your Maximum Leader) is how the Confederacy lasted as long as it did. For many years your Maximum Leader was willing to chalk up the Confederacy’s durability to the outstanding leadership of southern generals. Then he abruptly changed his mind and was willing to go with the ineptitude of Union generals. Now he feels that it was a combination of the two, combined with stubborness. As is often the case with democracies throughout history a total victory must be won before the fighting can end.

No matter why it lasted as long as it did, the outcome was never really in doubt. And so, your Maximum Leader doesn’t muse over the war.

Your Maximum Leader does mull over the issue of slavery and how slavery (and the Civil War broadly speaking) formed (and deformed) our republic - even to the present day. Your Maximum Leader is sure that the Civil War will come up again and again over the next four years; and he’ll comment as the moment is upon him.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader will do something he’s not done in a while… A link dump to bits he’s liked on other blogs…

Did you play D&D as a kid? Your Maximum Leader did. How about testing your knowledge of Pole-arms with this quiz? Your Maximum Leader scored 10 of 22. He was pleased. Bejeweled mylan cap doff to Professor Mondo.

Did your Maximum Leader mention how much he laughed at this post from Mrs P? No? Well he did. Obama & Sheen.

You know if it wasn’t for our good friend Skippy, your Maximum Leader wouldn’t have known that it is (again) election time in Canada. Your Maximum Leader isn’t picking a winner. He doesn’t know enough to pick sensibly. He does know that he likes reading Skippy’s commentaries on the elections… Check some out here and here. (NB to Skippy… You can keep Bree Olson & Diet Pepsi. I’ll take Sofia Vergara.)

Val Kilmer could play your Maximum Leader in a movie financed by your Maximum Leader on his Visa card…

You should also check out your Maximum Leader’s buddy Kevin’s web site. He is beginning the planning stages of a walk across America.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader needs a little help. Here is the situation… Your Maximum Leader had a lot of leftover rice the other day. This leftover rice is a standard basmati rice. He was thinking what he could do with it and into his head popped “rice pudding!”

So, he pulled out ye olde “Joy of Cooking” and found a rice pudding recipe. Sadly, it called for uncooked rice. He then checked two other cookbooks and found similar recipes. He then went to the interwebs and found variations on a theme. All of them were rice, milk/cream, sugar and raisins/nuts. He tried one of them and got a delicious tasting pudding, but it didn’t set up like he wanted. Your Maximum Leader likes his pudding (dessert pudding rather than savory pudding) to be pretty firm.

Your Maximum Leader thought that he could add a beaten egg to the mix and that would likely thicken it up and cause it to set up. But before your Maximum Leader goes down this path two things must occur. The first is that he has to finish eating all the liquid rice dessert he’s made so far. The second is that he figures he’d just put up a post and ask any of his readers (NB: your Maximum Leader is looking at you Mrs P) to suggest a rice pudding reciepe that sets up well and uses leftover rice.

Carry on.

Gilles set out on a bright spring day. All his young life, he’d wondered about the patches of similarly shaped stones around the village fields. Most of the village houses were made of these square-ish stones taken from the fields. One day he realized he could connect the patches together in a line. It dawned on him that the stones were a path.

And so it was, in March 1173, Gilles the peasant left his village in Anjou to follow the path.

Many months later Gilles learned that all roads do in fact lead to Rome.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader had a very enjoyable (if too short time) time at a book signing last night. The author was the Amazing Ben Thompson - creator of the completely awesome web site Badass of the Week. The book being signed was his second “Badass: The Birth of a Legend”. Your Maximum Leader will enjoy reading Ben’s new book. If you like his site, you will love the book and should rush on over to Amazon and buy yourself a copy. Your Maximum Leader’s only regret on this meeting was that he couldn’t spend more time with Ben (assuming that Ben would have wanted to spend time with your (and his) Maximum Leader). Your Maximum Leader had to be fatherly and pick up the Villainettes from piano lessons and return to the Villainschloss to look after Mrs Villain and the Wee Villain (both of whom had little stomach viruses). Your Maximum Leader would gladly have bought Ben a drink or two. (NB to Ben Thompson: if you are back in the neighborhood let me know and I’ll buy…)

After meeting Ben, the second big event of yesterday was the beginning of baseball season. Sadly your Maximum Leader’s beloved Washington Nationals fell to the Atlanta Braves. One hopes that the Nats can recover and claw their way up to .500 on Saturday and surge to .666 on Sunday.

Since it is that time of year… Your Maximum Leader predicts that his beloved Nationals will will 76 or more games this year. We might even very close to being a .500 team. He would love to regale you all with predictions of a playoff berth, but it just isn’t going to happen. He’ll root the Nats on and will lookfor great improvement this year.

Play ball and go Nats!

One last thing as it is the first of the month… Rabbit.

Carry on.